Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

Always glad to see someone else reading (or at least quoting) Cather. Timely, as her letters will be published next month (against her express wishes).

Here's an excerpt of the NYTimes story:

I see the end of the article also quotes:

But now Cather “no longer belongs entirely to herself,” Ms. Stout added. “She belongs to everyone.”

Which I suspect was probably exactly the point of Cather's will, what she wanted to avoid. What they neglect to discuss is the fame (notoriety at least) these "scholars" will obtain as a result of neglecting the author's wishes - though, of course, as "scholars" they care nothing for such things. (Yeah, right. Grubby little people. grumble, grumble, grumble. )

[kennyc]

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'conner born 3/25/1925

[astrangerhere]

“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.”

Flannery O'Connor

[TaraMcTiernan]

One of my favorite quotes is from Anna Quindlin's One True Thing where the mother, who is dying of cancer, is talking to her tough-as-nails reticent daughter about life, trying to tell her what she'd learned about life and what she feared for her daughter's future:

"But I wanted to say it...because I won't be able to say it when I need to, when it's one of those nights and you're locking the front door because of foolishness about romance, about how things are supposed to be. You can be hard, and you can be judgmental, and with those two things alone you can make a mess of your life the likes of which you won't believe. It's so much easier...the being happy. It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TaraMcTiernan

One of my favorite quotes is from Anna Quindlin's One True Thing where the mother, who is dying of cancer, is talking to her tough-as-nails reticent daughter about life, trying to tell her what she'd learned about life and what she feared for her daughter's future:

"But I wanted to say it...because I won't be able to say it when I need to, when it's one of those nights and you're locking the front door because of foolishness about romance, about how things are supposed to be. You can be hard, and you can be judgmental, and with those two things alone you can make a mess of your life the likes of which you won't believe. It's so much easier...the being happy. It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing."

[covingtoncat73]

"There is no failure here, Sweetheart. Just when you quit." From "Miracle Drug" by U2

[pdurrant]

"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"

— "In The Neolithic Age", Rudyard Kipling

[kennyc]

“How great was the humiliation when one who stood beside me heard the distant sound of a shepherd's pipe, and I heard nothing; or heard the shepherd singing, and I heard nothing. Such experiences brought me to the verge of despair; but little more and I should have put an end to my life. Art, art alone deterred me.”
- Ludwig von Beethoven

[covingtoncat73]

Good ones, PD and Kenny.

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

[BenG]

“Woe to he who checkmates his opponents at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage.”
― Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection

[kennyc]

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

[WT Sharpe]

.....It was said by Fisher Ames that "falsehood proceeds from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling on his boots".
..........— Niles' Weekly Register (7 May 1831) Volume 40, page163. Fisher Ames (1758–1808) was a Representative from Massachusetts to the 1st United States Congress. This appears to be the earliest attribution of a quote whose variants have been attributed to everyone from Mark Twain (1835–1910) to Winston Churchill (1874-1965). The Baptist evangelist Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) made a similar statement in an 1885 sermon, referring to the statement as an "old proverb" even by his day: "It is a great deal easier to set a story afloat than to stop it. If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, 'A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.' "

[TaraMcTiernan]

Originally Posted by kennyc

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
― Anne Lamott

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Love these and especially Anne Lamott's. I couldn't agree more; that is exactly how I feel about fiction/novels.

[kennyc]

All serious daring starts from within.
- Eudora Welty

born April 13, 1909: Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Eudora Welty was born 104 years ago today in Jackson, Mississippi. The early email client Eudora was named after Welty as a tribute to her short story "Why I Live at the P.O."

[gmw]

"We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so we might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds - and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own."

From the introduction to "Prey" by Michael Crichton. (2002)